La soledad del ser

In 1892 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragist, abolitionist and pioneer in the fight for women's rights, wrote a deeply feminist and existentialist speech in which she defended the full autonomy of women based precisely on the immeasurable and radical loneliness of all humans. Denying women a good preparation and full development of their faculties would be an attack against half of humanity, since we are all condemned and forced to depend on our own resources in the face of life's challenges. In a simple and unanswerable way, Stanton offered devastating arguments in favor of female independence and freedom. That memorable speech, which combined political urgency and philosophical depth in such a beautiful and suggestive way, is now history in capital letters of American feminism.